seat by Miss Emily Fox-Seton, began to talk to her about Lady Maria's
charity-knitting which she had taken up. Emily was so gratified that she
found conversation easy. She did not realise that at that particular
moment she was a most agreeable and comforting companion for Agatha
Slade. She had heard so much of her beauty during the season, and
remembered so many little things that a girl who was a thought depressed
might like to hear referred to again. Sometimes to Agatha the balls
where people had collected in groups to watch her dancing, the
flattering speeches she had heard, the dazzling hopes which had been
raised, seemed a little unreal, as if, after all, they could have been
only dreams. This was particularly so, of course, when life had dulled
for a while and the atmosphere of unpaid bills became heavy at home. It
was so to-day, because the girl had received a long, anxious letter from
her mother, in which much was said of the importance of an early
preparation for the presentation of Alix, who had really been kept back
a year, and was in fact nearer twenty than nineteen.

"If we were not in Debrett and Burke, one might be reserved about such
matters," poor Lady Claraway wrote; "but what is one to do when all the
world can buy one's daughters' ages at the book-sellers'?"

Miss Fox-Seton had seen Lady Agatha's portrait at the Academy and the
way in which people had crowded about it. She had chanced to hear
comments also, and she agreed with a number of persons who had not
thought the picture did the original justice.

"Sir Bruce Norman was standing by me with an elderly lady the first time
I saw it," she said, as she turned a new row of the big white-wool scarf
her hostess was knitting for a Deep-Sea Fisherman's Charity. "He really
looked quite annoyed. I heard him say: 'It is not good at all. She is